Yearly Archives: 2009

Saturday was another successful FEAST. KR is back in the office. Friday I stayed home sick. Thursday I had dinner at A&W’s. I brought whiskey. Sunday I did some drinking with the gang. Then met Mike B and Ryan at GBM. Then went and saw Heather and the Barbarians in the LES. Long day Sunday!

Film
Into the Wild — Depressing. I liked it until I started thinking about it.
Wheel of Time — Boring Herzog movie.
Myra Breckinridge — Freak out movie for the time. Raquel Welch.

Went to some bars. Went to a party or two. Bike riding. Nothing out of the ordinary. Work very quiet.

Film
Foxes — Young Jodi Foster, a gal from The Runaways, Scott Baio, and Randy Quaid.
John Cage: From Zero — Fell asleep
Grace Is Gone — Iraq war movie with John Cusack. Sad.
Shoot ‘Em Up — Delivered on the title. Why did I rent this?
The Wild Bunch — Old western. Pretty good.
Inland Empire — Fell asleep.
You the Living — Swedish movie. Liked it quite a bit.
Mad Men Season 2 — Watched pretty much back to back over 2 days.

Helped out Brock for a performance at the Judy party at the Hose in the East Village. Banged a drum and wore t-shorts. Washed the glitter off and went to Maine for David and Molly’s wedding. We camped, sang, drank, ate, played games, watched nuptials, danced and so forth. All in all, a perfect event. I held that kitty, chased a puppy, looked at living organic animals, held babies, shook hands, and hardly ever went indoors.

I’m back on my tiny house researching kick.

Film
Mister Lonely — meh
The Cockettes — SF drag group. Drugs, glitter.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being — Long. I don’t know anything about history. Good.
The Saragossa Manuscript — Old. Psychadelic. Long.
The Farmer’s Wife — Series about a family farm. Real.
Still Life — Following slow and quiet Chinese people looking for other people.
Woman in the Dunes — Old Japanese movie. Good.

Books

City of Refuge
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Returned to NY. Partied some. Pokered. Work is slow.

Film
Le Magnifique — French film about a writer. Pretty good.
Stardust Memories — Woody Allen Movie.
Touch of Evil — Charlton Heston plays a Mexican detective. Orson Wells plays a fat detective.
Standard Operating Procedure — Watched about half. The military tortures people.
Before Night Falls — I think this one was about something in Cuba.
The Dark Knight — Batman, Gotham, Bruce Wayne, Wayne Manor
Night and the City — Good old noir film. I like a good old noir film.
Rockets Redglare — Documentary about this actor / comedian / East Village fixture who hung out with Steve Buschemi.
In the Mirror of Maya Deren — About this artist lady.
Visioneers — Indie movie with Zach Galafanakis.
Inglorious Basterds — Shoot em up with weird terrorist parallels.


A whole month ago we did a talk for hit book at the book store. On Saturday Liana, Bill and Sarah had a party where we ended up drinking everything in sight and singing the banana boat song very early in the morning. That was the last fun to be had for the next 2 weeks or so. KR and I worked like crazy to meet the deadline. Which we did. I think we left work around 11 or so Friday night and I packed for my trip on Saturday morning before my flight at noon.

New Orleans
My main focus was swimming in the pool and eating. I stayed at this bed and breakfast place with a pretty nice little pool.

Here’s the places I remember eating —
Cochon. Trendy butcher type place. Last time I we went to their sandwich shop. I went there again for lunch and had 2 specials instead of their big sandwich.

One small plate of foie gras toped with apricots and a tomato and cucumber salad and a poached egg.


Went back a different evening for dinner and started with pig cheeks that came with goat cheese. On the other plate was hog cheese. Then rabbit with dumplings.

Bayona. Not as trendy, but definitely the best meal of the trip. The starters were the highlight — scallops. veal sweetbreads, yellowfin tuna. I had the pork chop for my main course. I can’t remember what I had for dessert but it was good.

Brennan’s. Older fancy seafood place that some people would think is classy, but so outdated it was uncomfortable to me. The food was pretty good overall but not exciting.

Had a really nice breakfast (crusted oysters, poached eggs, canadian bacon and hollandaise on english muffin) at Stanley. Had 2 nice lunches at Surrey’s which was funny cause they were considered to be the “healthy option” by the innkeeper. Had some pretty decent brick oven pizza at Slice. Enjoyed drinking beers at Circle Bar.

Then on to Kansas.
Brooke picked me up and we went over to a BBQ Baby Shower for Darren and Lexi over at Mike and Jen’s. We watched Darren open presents. Hung out in Mike’s sweet basement. Saw the Brantbaby. Went over to see Charles Blume the next day. I held him and he slept and pulsated. He may have pooped. Jake picked me up and we headed to the Wam. I met Mari, my mom’s newest exchange student. Did the usual drinking and eating all week. Had a BBQ on Friday that was a success I think. Went to the bar that night to be glared upon. Jake, Klint and I shot guns all afternoon on Saturday. Sunday there was a Torrey family picnic at the park. My jeans are too tight now, and I’m back at work.

Went to the 2 L train Bushwick bars last Wed with Jeff. Thursday went to the going away party for Marilynn at E. River Bar.

Friday afternoon we hatched a camping plan based on blog friend of friend Cold Splinters. That night it rained and I went to bed early.

Saturday we hauled our gear to the J, then the LIRR, then a ferry. Then walked about 1.5 miles down the beach, past the beach goers and the few other campers. We set up an impressive camp site fairly quickly. Then did some full-throttle chilling out. Made a nice dinner using a mix of our farm shares then did a lot of star gazing. Woke up pretty early on Sunday, made breakfast. Lazed around some more. Mike and Aug did some exercising and I read magazines. Packed up and trekked back. All an in all a pretty successful stay-cation. (more pics) When I got back that night I had designs on riding my bike around, but I immediately fell asleep as soon as I laid down on my bed.

Last night I popped in to pick up my new hand-me-down blender from Jenny and ended up lingering around and eating dinner. There was some frustration with the chicken, but I didn’t mind. I like hanging out in the kitchen. On the ride home I decided I should get a beer, so I stopped at GBM and watched these kids with outfits off the racks from St. Marks get on stage. I wish it was a parody or comedy act, but it was for real. The gist — took an amazingly long time carefully setting up. The actual music was all pre-programmed on the synth with the occasional bang of the keyboard. I am not sure the guitar was plugged in, or turned up, cause I couldn’t hear it. This third guy had some sort of electronic device, but I am not sure what he was doing. The best song was one where they just screamed. There were a lot of bad ones, including some kind of sad lullaby and an embarrassing cover of Bone Machine. The best thing they did was sing happy birthday in between every song. Meanwhile their posse was loving every minute and never put down their digital cameras. I would like to hang out and observe these people some more.

Film
The Day of the Locust — 1975 film about 1930s Hollywood. I’m not sure if it was good. There were pretty good parts, but sometimes it wasn’t so great. Could have been edited into an entirely different movie. I haven’t seen much of Karen Black’s work, but I am guessing this is Karen Black at her best (which is only pretty good).

Baby Doll — Racy movie considering it was made in 1956. I didn’t like it at first, but then liked it when it was all over.

Spent the prior week resting and getting my batteries charged. I think I had allergies on top of exhaustion. Luckily when Friday evening came around and it was time to meet up with Sam I was rip roaring ready to go. We got his bag to my apartment. Then we went in sat in the scrap heap in the back of GBM and had a brew. Then we went and sat in the patio at Trophy Bar and had 2 brews. Then we went to Diner and had a brew while waiting to eat their incredible food. It was good. We ate, and gushed. Then went to Tandem to dance and talk to people.

Saturday Sam, Jeff, and I went on bike to Governor’s Island. It was very pleasant. Then we went to Mikes and threw bones and drank leftover July 4 Coors. Then we got pizza and went to Jeff’s and drank til exactly midnight.

Sunday I rode my bike on down to Ft. Tilden beach to meet up with the gang. We soaked up rays all day. Then I rode back to Bushwick to the pizzeria where we ate loads while wishing Jen and Willow off on the docu-journey.

Film
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession — about this guy who programmed movies for this channel in LA. He killed his wife and commited suicide in the end.

20 centimeters — I watched some of this. It’s a Spanish musical about a narcoleptic, transvestite prostitute.

Lolita — Meh. I thought the dude was pretty pathetic.

Justice: A Cross the Universe — These guys kind of stink.

4 July

photo from aug

Yup. The big 4th of July. The gang went up to Slide Mountain again. The archive so far is here.

Thurs. Some traffic, arrived at the house. Made lunch. Sat on the port and started brainstorming for the play. Waited for more vans to show up. Made dinner. Hung around. Analog status updates. Watched old videos about sex.

Friday. Breakfast. More waiting for more vans. Finalized and rehearsed the play. Van 3 arrives. Swimming. Ping Pongs. Frisbee. Skipping rocks. Did the play. Dancing. Dinner. More dancing. Drank way too much. Singing?

Saturday. Sat on the porch all day. Got painted. Slept a considerable amount of the afternoon, including through dinner. Danced on the basketball court. Big fire. Recreation of catholic mass at 2am.

Sunday. Cleaning up. Me hiding from people cause I can’t form words anymore.

Everyone’s been talking about the weather. It has pretty much been stinking, but this weekend it was super nice. On Thursday Michael Jackson died. Everyone was blasting his music all night. On Friday we had a pizza party then went to Union Pool. On Saturday we did a massive hit book at a bookstore. Then Emily hosted a dance party. On Sunday I somehow got up early and did yoga in the park with Laura, DMP and Molly. It was hard. Then went to Marlow with some gals. Then went to some kind of food event, but we were too stuffed from lunch, so we drank beer. Then we went to Jame’s art photo thing. We individually got to varying degrees of naked and hung upside down while he took pictures. Then we went to the Metropolitan for beer and free bbq. I was pretty tired on Monday.

Film
John Waters: This Filthy World – just him on stage doing a monologue. I really liked it.